Blue Origin continues work on lunar landers during recovery from New Glenn explosion
TOKYO - Blue Origin is continuing to develop its Blue Moon lunar landers, with seven vehicles in production, while recovering from the New Glenn pad explosion more than a month ago.
In a talk at the Spacetide conference here July 6, John Couluris, senior vice president for lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said the company's work on its Blue Moon Mark 1 uncrewed lander and Mark 2 crewed lander has not been interrupted by the investigation into and recovery from the May 28 pad explosion that destroyed a New Glenn rocket and key infrastructure at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 36.
"We are continuing that effort in Blue Origin while we return to flight with New Glenn," he said. "We have not slowed down."
That includes four Mark 1 landers in various stages of production. The first, designated serial number 1 and named Endurance, was scheduled to launch later this year before the New Glenn explosion. Couluris said the company was wrapping up testing of the lander before putting it into "quiescent operations" while awaiting a launch now expected in the first quarter of 2027.
A second Mark 1 lander is being built to carry NASA's VIPER robotic rover for launch later in 2027. He said the company has started work on two more Mark 1 landers to carry the Lunar Terrain Vehicle rovers being built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost under NASA awards announced May 26. Those landers are scheduled to launch in 2028.
Blue Origin is also working on three Mark 2 landers. One is a prototype that will launch to low Earth orbit in 2027 as part of the revised Artemis 3 mission, with NASA's Orion spacecraft docking with it. It will use the same crew module as later Mark 2 landers, but without a full propulsion system.
"We leaned forward and started building this vehicle as soon as the NASA administrator offered that the pivot of this mission would happen," he said of Artemis 3.
The company is also working on two vehicles for what it calls the Mark 2 Alpha lander that will be used for crewed landings. One will fly an uncrewed landing demonstration mission in 2028, followed by a crewed landing.
"This lander is now optimized for the orbits that we've worked with NASA on," he said. He did not disclose those orbits, but they would be a shift from the near-rectilinear halo orbit originally planned when the lander and Orion would rendezvous at the lunar Gateway.
"Now that we're not going to a Gateway orbit, you can see this lander looks a little different than what we've shown in the past," he said. "The reason for that is to optimize performance to and from that lunar orbit."
Couluris also used the presentation to provide additional details about Blue Origin's recovery from the New Glenn pad explosion. The company outlined June 30 an alternative concept of operations, or conops, for moving the vehicle from an integration building to the pad that eliminates the need to replace the transporter-erector destroyed in the explosion.
He emphasized the company is working quickly to get the pad, in a revised configuration, back into service. "We budgeted 29 days for the cleanup, the evidence recovery and the investigation portion," he said. "We were able to complete that in 21 days."
He did not discuss what caused the explosion but said the investigation was able to recover components from all seven BE-4 engines in the rocket's first stage and the two BE-3U engines in its upper stage. "We've now cleaned up the pad completely and we're starting the rebuilding process."
That rebuilding process includes destacking the main tower at the pad, which suffered some damage but was largely intact. Crews have started removing the upper segments of the tower in recent days.
"We could have rebuilt the tower in place, but we've already started destacking that tower because we can move a lot quicker if we have it on the ground, able to work in parallel," he said. "We'll take that apart, put in our cryogenic umbilicals as well as all the supporting equipment, and stack that back up in the coming months."
He said the company is working with NASA to incorporate lessons from Space Launch System operations at Launch Complex 39B into the rebuilt pad, along with changes it had already planned for a second pad at Launch Complex 36 designed for the larger New Glenn 9×4 vehicle. Work on that second pad, named LC-36B, started last September, although the company had said little about it before the explosion on the current pad.
Couluris reiterated the company expected to have the rebuilt pad completed by late this year. The new LC-36B is scheduled to be ready by late 2027.
"We're very proud of the entire team," he said. "Morale is high. We are rebuilding this pad into the concept of operations that we want. We're building our lunar landers with NASA because we're all one team together."
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